The greatest challenge most people face is their unwillingness to live in and under the love of God. They either don’t know how to experience God’s love, run away from God’s love (as I have) or outright reject God’s love. There are, of course, many reasons for these reactions. Most of which traces back to poor human role modeling by “loved ones.”

God does so to redirect us from our sinful self-destructive path back onto a journey of joy and peace. The Bible explains that God wouldn’t be a loving God if there was no discipline: “My dear child, don’t shrug off God’s discipline, but don’t be crushed by it either.

It’s the child he loves that he disciplines; the child he embraces, he also corrects.

God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children.

In the quiet can learn that we are lovable and that we can be and need to be loved. When we rest in God’s love — truly allow God into our being — we can acknowledge our imperfections, we can feel our wounds, we can see our scars and admit our sins. When we rest we can be quiet. In the quiet is God waiting for us.

“Be still, and know that I am God! Our God says, “Calm down, and learn that I am God!” 1

In an atmosphere of love, resting in God’s intimate love, we can finally experience an awareness that our value is settled in God’s mind. God will not, cannot, love us more or less.

We tend to develop conditionally dependent relationships with people. Relating with God is different than that. It’s rational to choose to “act lovingly” our of fear.

We can obey God because we fear the wrath of God. On the other hand, God invites us to learn that his wrath is fearful, but that a loving relationship with the Almighty will naturally lead to obedience.

When I have allowed God to come close, as close as I have so far, it can feel overwhelming. I forced back tears just now thinking of how special I felt. At the same time, I know that I willfully and consciously pushed God back because it felt so…overwhelming, that I felt like I couldn’t house God’s love inside of me.

“For your own good.” That’s the kinda phrase that adults used to get me to do something I didn’t want to do without explaining all the details for me. Why they undoubtedly had wonderful reasons that “for your own good” was sufficient, inquisitive minds like mine were never satisfied.

While some people might have chosen to use their good judgement or “common sense” to avoid such mishaps, I did not.

Ignoring “for your own good” warnings was a choice, but ignoring “for your own good” has left me with many scars to prove my unwillingness to heed the “for your own good” warnings.

Eric Valli, a professional photographer, is dangling by a nylon rope from a 395 foot cliff in Nepal.

Nearby on a rope ladder is another man, Mani Lal, doing what he has done for decades: hunting honey.

Here in the Himalayan foothills, the cliffs shelter honeycombs of the world’s largest honeybee. At the moment, thousands of them are buzzing around both men. Lal, a veteran of hundreds of such attacks, is calm. Not so Mr. Valli.

I have become aware of the illuminating power of God’s words and I’d like to help you to know what I know.

Unless we understand what sin is we may be blind to reality.

“So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.” [1 John 1:6-7, NLT]